The power of play

Welcome to 2018 and to my first blog post as interim head of school. I will be updating these posts regularly as a way to write about KCD, happenings around campus, and trends in education.

I have many great memories from my first visit to KCD in the spring of 1994, when I was interviewing for a teaching position in the English department. One of the things that stands out the most was a seemingly small detail: when I met the upper school director in his office, there were students in there playing chess. I was coming from a graduate school environment, where students only came to their professors’ offices when they needed help. They certainly didn’t hang out in administrators’ offices playing games.

Little did I know at the time, but that game revealed something important about our school. Time for play and social interaction is part of who we are, just as the personal relationships between students and our faculty, staff, and administrators are. Playtime is time for friendship and fellowship. It’s time to exercise our bodies as well as our minds. It’s time to make new connections in our community and to reinforce old ones.

For most of the past several years, my office window on campus has faced the playground and the open area between the JK–8 building and the Upper School. From this vantage point, I watch students at play every day. Lower and middle school students alike sprint to the playground to grab their favorite spots for active or imaginative play—some on the swings or slides, some on the steps or beneath the turrets of the playground. There are pick-up games of soccer in the field, basketball games on the sport court, and corn hole tournaments outside the Upper School.

Nothing compares to the intense four square games though. Students and teachers alike line up to claim a square, make up a silly rule, and strive to outlast everyone else with careful aim. This year there have been epic games in which lower school students have been joined by their teachers and upper school students. And no one lets someone else win just because they are younger! These are authentic times of play, filled with competition and creativity, filling the air with laughter and shouts of victory—along with a few yells of frustration, of course. We take our four square seriously around here!

All of this activity shows what I love about our campus environment. It is comfortable, casual in the best of ways, and always filled with energy. Our students are at ease with each other and with the adults who are part of their daily routines. The enthusiasm and passion that KCD students bring to times of play aren’t confined to their ‘downtime.’ Instead, our students are ‘all in’ with everything they do, whether it’s academics, athletics, fine arts activities, clubs, or ‘downtime.’

As we head back to campus at the start of a new calendar year, the unusually cold temperatures outside might delay our ability to get back to the fields and the courts, so we’ll spend our downtime inside playing board games, working on art projects, creating worlds through imaginative play, and talking with friends to reconnect after the break. All of these activities, just like our outside play, will strengthen our sense of friendship and fellowship. They will remind us how much we cherish our time together and the community we share at KCD. Welcome back, Bearcats, to 2018!